


F.M.L

by lollki



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Competitive Swimming AU, Enemies to Lovers, Gene should take care of himself better, M/M, POV First Person, Recreational Drug Use, a whole lotta introspection, bad bad mental health, darkness & depression, it's a dark one lads..., sorry boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25670908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollki/pseuds/lollki
Summary: "Itcan be the face of a boy you know you‘ll never measure up to.Itcan be the face of a boy as he tells you: Don‘t take it to heart.Itis that boy knowing that no matter how hard you try, he‘ll always touch the end of the pool a second before you. It’s the image of him that you see as you finish your lap, head barely out the water but met with him watching you, out-of-breath but relaxed, pink-cheeked but winning."
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13
Collections: Sledgefu Week 2020





	F.M.L

**Author's Note:**

> [Insert excuses for why I'm not perfect]
> 
> I feel like i should note that if you're in a bad mental space... I mean, kind of audacious of me to assume I'd have that kind of impact but i definitely took some inspiration from my previously eating disordered habits, if that makes sense. Like, it's not about it but if you're sensitive to that, proceed with caution!

The first thing you need to know about swimming is that once you‘ve touched onto the end of a 50m pool often enough to close the distance to the moon and back, the thing that’s most apparent is that in the water, it’s just you and _it_.

 _It_ can take many different forms: sometimes it’s just the water itself, the sensation of it as you part it in two, as it engulfs you head to toe and it’s the closest you’ll ever come to being back in the womb. Something about the moment when you’re floating and weightless brings you back to that very fundamental state, swallowed in blue like death and life at the same time. Holy and pure, something whole. Your breathing can be _it_ , exhales birthed through your mouth in fat bubbles rising to the surface as you keep going, almost waiting to inhale a lungful of water with how out of breath you are. It can be trivial too - what you‘ll have for dinner, something stupid you did ten years ago, budgeting in your head. Sometimes it’s the drills of your coach that’ll pull you under, the way they’re turning your heart into lead and you can feel the rest of your body trying to float but the dense heavy core of you trying to reach the bottom of the pool - V-shaped with how you’re bent by the weight of it. 

Recently, for me, _it_ is the face of a boy I can never quite reach.

He’s been taunting me for the better part of a year now and while I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a peer being fitter than me, the way it’s been so easy to fit him into exactly where I myself am inadequate started getting to my head.  
The first time we met, about a year ago in the later summer months just about dipping into autumn, where outdoor practice was still feasible, I hardly even noticed him. I’d heard it over a few corners, some new guy on the team that was supposed to be starting with us the upcoming semester - and when I eventually saw who I then came to know as Merriell Shelton, it wasn’t for his swimming. With his appearance, trim, curly-haired, tattooed, bright-eyed - the spectre of him was designated to my occasional fantasy.   
  
The thing that gave me that false sense of security was that Shelton’s times were incredibly shaky, to the point it seemed like a fluke he was accepted on the team to begin with. He’d come close to my best every once in a while but then he’d fall all the way behind, almost like he had no idea over how to yield his own power. At the time I was much too worried about a different colleague, a tight head-to-head between the two of them before the colleague eventually quit swimming for reasons I never quite understood. I would see Shelton around but hardly ever talked to him, too invested in his little rivalry to notice how he steadily started rising in rank on the scoreboard.   
  
By the time he did, his and my bests were a quarter of a second apart and after that it took two weeks before he beat me by a full second. I was already stagnating by then and because of that, it hit deep. 

That’s where the _it_ started turning into something blacker, something more like a maelstrom I had no control over. I’d dive under, see Shelton’s face during warm-ups. Even my starts - usually a perfect arch in the air with that perfect angle to propel me ahead - started becoming hesitant, like as soon as I’d touch my fingers onto the glass-like surface of the pool, cracking it open with my middle and index, I’d be face-to-face with the ghost of Shelton, the very apt, very capable him, the kind who’s good at this without even trying.   
  


\---

The fall wind tousles my damp hair as I step outside the entrance hall to the pool after another merciless team practice. Exiting to my left and right are colleagues that pay me no mind, the way I’m standing like a boulder in a riverbed, the one static force to all that dynamic. I rummage through my bag in search for the car key and muse on how dark it’s suddenly gotten. Summer is still in the back of my mind but clearly past the very lowest end of it with how I have to use the flashlight on my phone to find the keys.  
  
October smells different - the damp leaves, the petrichor. The way scents dissipate in the cold, leaving way for just the dirt, the wet concrete.   
I know I get blue during this particular time of year but this year especially, I’m so worn out I can’t remember feeling anything other than bone-crushing stress.  
  
I’m worn out, have been for weeks. I train just like everyone else, 2 hours of weights 6 days a week, the rest of it happens in the pool but where I used to progress, if slowly but steadily, I’m now a fixed force.

I’m craving meat like nothing else, I’m craving a drink that I know I won’t let myself have. My body is becoming more of an obstacle than it ever has, I’ll look down at myself, see: chest, stomach, legs, feet. I’ll pick them apart in the mirror, I’ll pick them apart as they’re not succeeding the way I want them to. I’ll look at Shelton’s body and in my mind I’ll place it next to mine. His thigh, my thigh. How it curves differently. His shoulders, my shoulders, his form, my form. I’ve taken to observing him recently because that way at least I’ll know what’s making me fail. I’m doing it in a way where I tell myself it’s for self-improvement or something along the lines - observe what’s different, attempt to emulate and all that. I’ll watch his flow, his movements but then, when I’m by myself and the stark light of the fluorescent tubes aren’t there to show my public self, I’ll use all those things to have a go at me. Coach is starting to suggest therapy which means that even he notices.

  
Feet on the gravel, I trod over to my car and the only thing that’s looking up today is the prospect of going to sleep to forget about it all for a few hours. The locks click open and when I sit, the condensation of my breath is dense enough to almost fog up the windshield. It’s gotten so cold so fast.   
I’m going through my missed messages - no light save for the blue of the screen and the orange glowing streetlamp my car is parked under. For a moment it feels so peaceful like this that I’m dreading turning the headlights on and backing out of the parking lot to head home. I want that moment of masochistic fascination with myself, just one moment where I get to wallow in how much I suck. Mum, Sid, colleague from the swim team who was sick this week. Friends. I swipe through them but I’m too tired to reply - haven’t called my mother in too long and she’s starting to look worried. A sigh. I turn on the radio only to immediately turn it off again.   
  
For the past few months, the car has been the only place I’ve been feeling normal. The only task it implies is to get myself from one place to the other and that’s beautifully simple. I like the simplicity of sitting there, knowing that right here, right now, I have no task other than to get home and that in itself is so profoundly different from anything else I’ve been doing that it gets hard to give up this little window of freedom. Usually, I plan it all out, every action, every hour, every day of every week. Once I get home to the apartment I share with my childhood best friend it means cooking for sustenance instead of enjoyment, it means cleaning up because a mess makes me miserable. Once I’m home I’ll go through the material for tomorrow and then I’ll fall into bed and it all vanishes from my mind until it’s’ back with the next morning. Rinse and repeat, I’ll be sure to have the exact same day tomorrow and the day after that. A life like in _Groundhog Day_ .   
  
But something forces me out of it.

The car door clicking open on the passenger side startles me out of my misery. Before I can even see who it is, I hear him asking “Can you drive me home?” and stupidly and dumbfoundedly, it takes me a second to place the voice despite it having haunted me in my dreams. 

My heart rate picks up with the sudden movement and he doesn’t seem to care because he’s stood leaning over the hood of it, peeking in through the door. Apparently I was so caught up I didn’t even notice it started raining. How long have I been sitting here?  
“Shelton?” I ask stupidly, squinting my eyes through the dark. He’s haloed in the light from the orange streetlamp, his curly hair drying tacky with chlorine.   
“Yeah.” He responds. It makes me feel like I’m slow.   
“So can you? I don’t wanna walk in the rain.”

I almost tell him to take the bus but despite myself, I sigh and nod yes.

“Thanks, man.”

It’s so abrupt of a moment that I’m having a hard time changing gears. Being caught up in my misery one second, then having the source of it seated next to me. My mouth is so dry I feel like I couldn’t come up with a coherent sentence if I tried. I wonder how he thinks about it, if he knows how he gets under my skin.  
“Mind if I turn on the radio?” Shelton asks and his fingers are already at the switch. I mumble out an affirmation that doesn’t really matter because by the time it’s out, the radio is already turned on. Hesitantly, like I’m made of stone, I take out the hand brake and change into first gear, the click of the turn signal mirroring my heart.

I’m all choked up, anxious with that strange presence next to me. I see him with every dive I take and the reality of him as it contrasts with my mind’s eye is vexing. I try to focus on the street but something tugs at my stomach, like someone hooked a fishing line into my navel. The slow spread of shame.

“Where d’you live?” I ask, if only to distract from what’s happening inside me. Shelton briefly looks up from his phone and something about how comfortable he is with receiving a service by me broadens the chasm between the two of us. It feels like he knows he’s better than me and has no hesitation showing it.  
He mumbles out a street name, on which there is an apartment complex mostly inhabited by students. It’s not unlike a dorm because the apartments are hardly larger than a single room, like living in a closet. I make a note of it and plan my journey as he goes back to whatever he’s doing on his phone. He’s quiet, which surprises me. When in the group with everyone else he’s constantly running his mouth, so I find it strange that once the two of us are alone, he’s nothing like that. He has his lips pursed, like he’s considering something, then goes back to typing. Secretly, I’m dying to know who he’s talking to.   
  
By the time we arrive at his house, we’ve exchanged no more than about 5 words, which is why what he says next feels like a punch to the gut. Just as he gets out, feet slapping against a puddle of water in the parking lot, rain on the side of his face, he says:   
“Don’t take it to heart.”

The shock and the shame that comes with it are a physical thing. For a moment I feel as though my ears are filled with cotton, the slam of the door being shut like the heavy, thrumming hit of a bass. As I watch him walk in hurried steps so as to not get caught in the rain, there is nothing left to that aquarium-like space than myself and the silence following his words. With just one line he’s seen me, deduced me and shot me down and I can’t believe how naive I was for thinking that maybe it was all in my head, like the people around me wouldn’t notice it. If I’d ever gotten into the habit of crying, this is where I’d be doing it, but since I never did, always closing in on myself rather than showing my cards I stew in the words and watch the world as I know it sink away.

I can’t sleep that night.  
When I arrive at home, Sid notices I’m in a bad mood and I can’t blame him for trying to ask what’s wrong, even if the last thing I want to do right now is to talk about it. The hair at the back of my head is still damp and leaves a spot on the pillow case when I go to lie down in my bed. The sensation of it almost has the power to make me even more miserable, like the cherry on top. I’m just so tired of it that all I can think about is how much I want it to end. Quit swimming, do something else. But then again, that was always the only thing to me and if I quit now, I’d be nobody. I hardly have the energy to get myself something to eat but I do it anyway, tired and all worn out, steps to the kitchen and back. I’m mad at thesame world and myself, I’m mad at trying so hard and by the time I notice I‘m going down a rabbit hole into my own anger, it‘s condensed enough to keep me up well into the early hours of morning.

Red behind my eyelids from the alarm clock painting 3:43 into the dark like a bloody gash, blue as the screen of my phone lights up with a message. I let it tire itself out, too apathetic to move my arm and flip it over face-down. I know I‘m wallowing but I keep coming back to it, like something about it gives me solace, like this misery is my home. I‘m mulling it over in my head; his face when he says the words. _Don’t take it to heart_. I can’t help it. Something about him is so intoxicating and so insidious at the same time, the dark kind of power he yields over me. In my mind‘s eye I watch him chew at his lip right before the whistle goes off for a 100m freestyle. He’s focused in that moment and I‘m not - I‘m busy watching him be focused - I think that no matter what he does, he’s right there in the midst of it, sees all of it, engulfed in the chaos head-first and if he gets bored, he‘ll just switch to something else. He’s poison to me, he’s the kind of poison I‘ll willingly inject if only to draw out the hurt.

—-

_It_ can be the face of a boy you know you‘ll never measure up to. _It_ can be the face of a boy as he tells you: Don‘t take it to heart. _It_ is that boy knowing that no matter how hard you try, he‘ll always touch the end of the pool a second before you. It’s the image of him that you see as you finish your lap, head barely out the water but met with him watching you, out-of-breath but relaxed, pink-cheeked but winning. It is the sticky-slow smile of him, not with you but at you, it is him jutting out his chin to get a rise out of you. It can be a paranoid kind of idea that it’s something intrinsic to him, that makes him better, like I’m just born wrong and he isn’t or that maybe, the water just likes him better.

I wonder what his _it_ is.

When we‘re doing backstroke the next day, I hit my head against the wall. For some reason I missed the line of flags that signal the end of the lap and I drive into it and the pain that goes through me is the kind that buzzes through your knees to your toes. It’s a hard enough sting that it brings tears to my eyes and I take off my goggles, checking the back of my head for blood as I wince against the contact. It comes back empty, devoid of red, and the first thought I have is: _No wonder, you weren’t fast enough_. I feel dizzy with exhaustion and the coach comes running over to me but when he asks me if I wanted to sit it out, I tell him no through gritted teeth. I swim it off and get out on the other side, sitting with my legs in the water as I take a gulp from my bottle. Almost as if on cue, I find Shelton in the water. He‘s graceful and effortless and I feel it well up in me at that - the pain helps. I watch him when he‘s done with his laps and chats up a friend of his, arm braced on the tiles, playing with the rubber band of his goggles. A stray curl is peeking out from under the swimming cap and he swipes at it and they laugh, he takes it off and puts it back on again.

Practice is the same that night as it always is, but worse. The words keep ringing in my head, it’s like they’re the only thing I‘ve been hearing for the past 24 hours and like any attempt to fight back gets drowned out by them. When I step out of the showers after practice and go to look at myself in the bathroom mirror, I see that the groves under my eyes have only gotten darker. The bruise-like purple stands out from the suction of my goggles after I take them off and I almost get lost in observing them, dark against my pale skin in the sickly fluorescent lighting of the bathroom. I look wan, with my skin all waxy and plastic, the shock of red hair making it stand out something mean. I‘m pulled into a trance by my reflection staring back at me, becoming less familiar by the second until the door whips open and half-dressed Shelton rushes past me. For the flash of a moment I see how his skin looks compared to mine, how his body looks in relation to mine. A healthy flush under his tan skin, alert, bright eyes. He halts when he sees me.

„Gene?“

I never noticed the silver barbell through his left nipple. I swallow.

„Shelton.“

„So…“ he starts, awkwardly clasping his hands together, eye contact maintained through the mirror. „Whatcha up to there?“

I look at him with an expression equal parts exhausted and unenthused. It does the trick.

„Right.“

He turns to walk over to the urinals and I hear the jangle of a belt buckle, the rasp of a zipper. Still staring back at myself, I find it hard to focus on my meandering when Shelton is only a few feet away, sighing in relief. The way he moves through the world so comfortably has me ready to snap. Instead of confronting him though, I ask my reflection:

„You need a ride?“

He makes an approving noise.

„Oh hell, won‘t say no to that.“

The barbed wire on his biceps dances as he comes up next to me to wash his hands. I observe the curve of his lip, the slope of his nose in the mirror and when he looks up, I quickly avert my eyes.  
“Let’s go?” he asks me, drying his hands off on the legs of his jeans, tight around his thighs. Slowly, I nod and tear my gaze away from the tired creature staring back at me in the mirror.

It’s raining again today, fat drops glinting like oil against the pitch-black of the sky. They hit the windshield in an arrhythmic clatter, pronouncing the dead silence between Shelton and I as I turn onto the main road leading into town. He’s typing on his phone again and hearing him laugh at something someone replied makes a jolt of some flavor of toxic emotion go through me. We stop at a red light and the raindrops on the windshield look like rubies, reflecting back and breaking the light into a hundred glinting spots. Shelton looks up, pushing his head back into the headrest like an impatient child. I decide, now is as good a time as any, heart picking up speed with the ensuing confrontation.

“What did you mean by what you said yesterday?”  
  
I look over to him, watch his brows shoot up.   
“What did I say yesterday?” 

I know he’s playing dumb from the shadow of a smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. His expression is the facsimile of a highschool bully, something that says _I didn’t think you’d have the balls to bring it up_ . I almost don’t wanna play into his hands by repeating it out loud but I’m too bent by it not to.   
“You said: Don’t take it to heart. Take what to heart?”   
He sighs.   
“Can I smoke in here?”   
It pisses me off. Of course he manages to maintain a habit I’d never allow myself and still be better than me. Besides, he’s deflecting.   
“No.”   
He puts the cigarette back into the pack, already halfway to taking it out, like he’d just assumed I’d let him do whatever he wants. He taps the lighter against his open palm three times, then bends to put it in the back pocket of his jeans.   
“Don’t know. _It_ . Sometimes I just say shit. That’s what I mean - don’t take it to heart.”  
  
I inhale, long and shaky, the pressure of my lungs prodding against that deep, dark hurt that’s accumulated over the past few months. Above anything else, I’m weary, so I can’t help but let it foam over.   
“So you’re sure you don’t mean that your times are better than mine and you’re seeing that it fucks with me?”   
  
He laughs. He really didn’t expect that. To be fair, neither did I.   
  
“Fuck, Gene, I mean… I think that’s something you’ll have to sort out with yourself.”   
He turns his head to look out the window, then back at me, with a different kind of resolve.   
“-And yeah, what if I did mean that? What are you gonna do about it?”   
  
He’s looking directly at me now and I feel his eyes go through me like a needle, straight through the trachea. The lights switch to green and I step on the gas, acting like I don’t notice how he’s mocking me.   
“You know what? I’ll level with you.” He then starts, as he sees that I’m pressed to come up with a reply at all. The way he spits the words out at me ties a millstone to my heart and I feel it sinking, sinking-   
“I know it’s fucking with you but I don’t really care because I work just as hard as you do and it’s kinda fucking arrogant of you to assume you somehow inherently deserve to be better than me.”

I’m quiet at that. His words hit on something so base and vile to me that I thought I’d forgotten about. I’m nauseous from hearing it, not only at what he says but at having been found out for my flaws. I can’t argue with it, my tongue a heavy slab in my mouth.  
  
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you actin’ like a dick when I first started here, like I wasn’t worth your time. Just remember you were the only one who acted like that so yeah, I get off on having topped your times because you would, too.”   
  
I know he’s right.   
  
As we drive onto the parking lot by the entrance to the apartment complex, the hurt is a jagged shard in my chest. I park the car but Shelton doesn’t get out immediately, instead sitting in the silence with me. I don’t understand why he doesn’t leave me to stew but then I notice how his demeanor has softened, contrasting the way he hit the words at me like bricks. Again, he clasps his hands together, a gesture I’ve been noticing about him recently, and while the set of his brow is still firm, something annoyed, he seems like he’s finally let himself be seen by saying what he said.

He opens the door and the sound of the rain becomes sharper, less dull, then he turns back to me.  
“Can I smoke now?”   
  
“You don’t know me.”   
  
I motion for him to go ahead with a throwaway gesture of my hand. He lights his cigarette, once again bending by the hip to get the lighter from his back pocket. The hiss of burning tobacco follows over the patter of the rain. The smell of smoke rises and settles over that of wet concrete and oil spill.   
  
“No but I do.” he responds and I groan frustratedly, throwing my face into my hands. The way he’s always quicker, always impossible to beat. It seems like he always knows the right thing to say or do without having to take even a second to think. It’s driving me nuts.   
  
“But you don’t, though! You don’t know how hard I work, the shit I do that makes me think I deserve being good at this.” I don’t say _being better than you at this_ .   
“You see half of me at practice, you don’t see me anywhere else and for you to tell me all this on the second time we talk at all, it’s mind-boggling!”   
  
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” He inhales, then blows the smoke into the humid night air.   
“But either way, I think it’s your own fault to get so caught up in some stupid shit someone says to you. I only said not to take it to heart, you did the rest all on your own.”   
  
I shake my head, too tired to delve into the mechanics of this conflict and he seems to catch on.   
“I’ll see you tomorrow at practice. Thanks for the ride.” He gets out of the car and grabs his bag from the back seat but before he wanders off, he leans into the passenger seat door and throws me one last look.   
“...And don’t take it to heart.”   
The door slams shut and I stop thinking from that moment onwards.

\---

The following weeks, I become a machine.

I stop talking to Shelton altogether, the bitter taste of that last interaction enough to deter me from even looking in his direction. The only thing I focus on is the rise and fall of my breathing chest, the curve of my body as it moves through the water. Laps, laps, laps. I go, I keep going and I notice how something newly invigorated starts growing in me. I’m physically exhausted, limbs like lead in the morning but ever since I stopped thinking about anything other than my body in the water, I feel strangely calm. Something about that last conversation we had must have broken a wall inside me because despite myself, I know that it’s a kind of breaking to stop listening to anything you’re thinking.

During this time, I track every basic function of my body. My head is filled with nothing but bpms, macronutrients, breathing rates. I optimize, then optimize some more. I wharf down about 3000 calories worth of protein every day, the rest of my diet being anything I can get my hands on to allow me to improve. I get hungrier by the minute, to the point it scares me. It feels like all I do all day, every day, the full cycle of 24 hours at a time that is my life is eat, sleep, swim. It consumes me but I have no hesitation letting it. It’s the clearest I’ve felt in a year.  
  
Whenever the thought of Shelton and what he said comes up, I swallow it down into that black hole at the back of my head where all things go that I don’t think about. I have dreams about him, where we’re both underwater but he can breathe and I can’t. I have dreams where I try to reach out but the tips of my fingers are always a half inch short of touching onto his skin. Most days, I wake up from these dreams drenched in sweat and most days, I immediately distract myself with something else.   
  
It’s starting to seem like anything I can’t think about in my waking hours will show its face in my dreams because lately, no matter how hard I tried to expel him from my thoughts, Shelton appears in every dream I have.   
  
One night, in some strange concoction my subconscious serves me up, I’m holding a knife with two hands.   
I hold it in place as I’m standing in an empty parking lot that’s completely empty save for myself - and then, as it happens in dreams, suddenly I’m pointing the knife at a ribcage. Shelton stands across me and looks at me like he’s daring me to push it in, into the thin skin between two wedges of cartilage - like he’d get some twisted satisfaction from me hurting him. I stand there, the dream parking lot shifting and changing shape around me but I’m frozen, leaden limbs, completely immobile. Right before I wake up, the thing in my hands melts away and blurs into flesh, into skin. The thing I’m now holding is the shape of Shelton’s ribcage that has that knife tattooed on it, like it’s melted into his skin and the very object I could have used to hurt him is now my bare hands, gently braced around his middle.   
  
When I wake up from that I don’t know what to do with myself, too hard-pressed to linger in the phantom sensation of his skin for a moment longer. This one is hard to shake off, every pore and mole under my dream-self’s fingertips so close to the real thing.   
I sit with it, upright in my bed as I stare ahead of me vacantly. It’s 5:23 a.m., just 7 minutes left to try and swallow down the lump the phantasm of his body put into my throat. Brown skin under my paper-white hands, damp with pearls of sweat, the knife tattooed on his side. My breathing is shallow and for a second, everything I’ve been pushing down and avoiding for the past weeks crawls up my throat like sick. 6 minutes to deal with it now, I feel like curling into myself. What does it mean? I try to remember every detail as the shadow of him under my palms settles and dispels like fog over a pond. Five minutes, then four, then three, two, one: As soon as my alarm goes off I rise out of bed and go to think about anything else.

No practice today but I’m off my game at the gym. I go for my usual routine for the days we don’t have practice: two hours before my classes, some stretching, some endurance training, then right back at it in the afternoon. I’m scheduled for a massage that’s long overdo, my muscles akin to stone under my skin, hard, foreign objects.  
  
I love the simplicity that is caring for nothing other than my physical form. My head is a vacant place, nothing but the grey mist of physicality and the way that it doesn’t allow for anything more complex. When I worry about my body and the results it can produce, I don’t have to think about my relationships or the things I’m missing out on by having chosen this life. I don’t have to think about the phantom of my past relationships, years ago and always with a bitter end brought on by how I didn't have enough time or attention or affection to give. I’m ascetic. I’m the pure form of a physical object placed into this world.   
  
When I get out of the massage, I’m lax and flexible for about five minutes until I lock up again. The stench of stale air and sweat in the gym is nauseating, nothing but a reminder of that futile effort.   
  
I go to stretch but it hurts to even bend my arm behind my shoulder. In front of the mirror I place them at my sternum. Both hands against my beating heart, I clasp them together. I don’t pay mind to how I look just as worn as two weeks ago anymore. I stretch out my arms, straight columns in front of my body, like I’m trying to revive my reflection. I go up, up, up, the joints in my elbows and shoulders crack. I reach them all the way over the top of my head and hover. One second, two seconds. With all I have I try to push them behind my back, have the bones of my upper arm roll in their sockets like I’m made of butter. I know I used to be able to bend them further but now I’m stood still. I look at my reflection, a caricature of a sportsman. I push again, I push again. The pain starts settling. It becomes strong enough to make my eyes glassy but no matter how hard I try, I can’t get them behind my head.

A slip, I don’t notice the lapse in time.

I run five miles. After a half-mile I take out my headphones to hear my own breathing and nothing but it over the electric thrum of the engine that is my heart. I go back to the mirror. 8:30pm. I bend my arms out in front of me, palms outward like I‘m trying to revive my reflection, I push up, up, up, I still.

I run another mile, switch to weights, crazed to put as much on them as I know I can lift without gaining muscle mass. The pressure of it hurts in my whole, sore body. It’s been rubbed raw, overused, but the strength I yield is stronger than the pins in my muscles and I pull the whole 100kg of it above me enough times to lose count. I go back to the mirror, 9:30pm. I bend my arms out in front of me, push up, I still, I can’t go further.

I take to haunting the locker room where the spectre of Shelton expects me. I dream him up on the bench next to me, imagine him sitting there with his legs propped up on his bag, grinning toothy over a cigarette. I place his imaginary hand on my thigh, squeezing the life out of me like an overripe peach. I shoot up and go back to the mirror; 10:30pm. I have to go at it twice with even keeping my arms suspended in the air, so lax and weak they fall back to my sides. I don’t get them behind my back.

I run another 2 miles,11:30 pm. I‘m getting slow. The mirror tells me I‘m becoming rigid, again.

I row for an hour, 12:30 am, when I try to stretch my hands behind my head, something feels sharp in my shoulder, like a blade pushed into the soft skin between two wedges of cartilage.

I sit under the cold shower raining down on me. I forget how long I‘ve been there. The water feels like needles against every square inch of surface on my body. Barely strong enough to complete the movement, I turn behind me and turn the handle to make it even colder. 1:30 am. I don’t try anymore.

I almost fall asleep in the locker room when I lie down on the bench, too tired, too worn out for a single movement. Sid‘s long gone to sleep, I know he’s not thinking about me here, and the tempting flat surface of the bench pulls me into it like a black hole. 

For a moment I wish I was living a different life. I think about all the things I could have, a restful week, a thick slice of cake. I think about how I could have a boyfriend, then, and about how I could probably keep him. I think about nights out with friends I don’t see nearly often enough, about trips home for Thanksgiving and Easter. I think of a proper Christmas Holiday that‘s longer than four days. I slip in and out of that dream-limbo, head pressed against the hard, plasticky wood where it’s resting and the closer I get to falling asleep, the more hopeful my thoughts are colored.

When I go to the mirror one last time, too tired to even stand straight, I still can’t bend my arms far enough to get my hands behind my head.

\---

I‘m sitting on the cold, sticky lino of the locker room floor when Shelton finds me. The clock on the wall shows the hand nearing 3am and when I hear the quiet footsteps approaching, I don’t perceive them as real for a second. I’m too convinced they’re another figment of my imagination. A door clicks and I’m alert enough to startle but not alert enough to do anything about it, the still shape of a human bunched up into the corner of a metal locker. I reverently raise my head and see him, and with how much I’ve thought about him today, I’m not surprised at finally having gone psychotic. The seconds tick away and I raise my head high enough for him to recognize me but when I expect him to have a go at me, he’s suddenly hurrying over with an urgency that has me wanting to back into the wall. He says my name. Says: “Eugene!”, tinted with mild panic as he touches my shoulder, a grasp I shy away from with how much I’m hurting there. He looks me directly in the eye but I can tell he’s not seeing much because of how his own flick left and right to gauge my expression. “What are you doing here?” I manage to rasp out in a way that sound completely foreign to me, voice hoarse and cracking at the edges. My head rolls back on my shoulders and it’s caught by his hand, right where I hit it two weeks ago. The spot still hurts a little but it’s nothing compared to what I’ve been making myself feel today.

“What are _you_ doing here?”

Shelton is full of surprises. He throws his bag on the bench and rummages through it, producing a protein bar that he hands me when he comes to sit next to me on the floor.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” I say and the laugh I press out feels forced and unlike me.

He shrugs.

“A guy I was seeing broke it off, came here to blow off some steam.”

He looks weirdly unaffected and takes the protein bar from me to open it, then hands it back.

“Now yours.”

“I’m locked up and tried to force it.”

He leans back on his hands to get a better look at me.

“Gene, you look fucked.”

“Thanks.”

He laughs and I finally eat, something unidentifiable in my chest from receiving such a selfless gesture from him.

“Have you been here since I left this evening?” he asks and it sounds hesitant, almost like he doesn’t wanna hear the truth.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, I know you wanna get out of your slump and all but this is crazy. You can’t have this be all you do, you hear me?”

“What else is there?”

He’s quiet at that, points the tip of his nose up in thought.

“When was the last time you swam just for fun?”

I think about it. I think about when I was last with my family for the summer and going to Mobile Bay. It must have been years at this point.

“Can’t remember.” I say truthfully.

“Hey, look at me.”

Shelton pats my knee with his hand, prompting me to turn my head.

“I’m gonna tell coach to take you off practice for a week, you’re gonna get some rest.”

Just as I’m about to open my mouth in protest, he shushes me. I can’t remember the last time someone shushed me.

“You try too hard, man. You need to let yourself be sometimes, it’s part of it.”

I let my head fall back into the locker, that produces a hollow, metallic sound upon impact.

“I know we don’t hang out much but why don’t you come with on Friday? We’re going out for drinks with some guys from the team. You look like you could use one.”

For a moment, I watch myself from the outside. Swimming has taken up such an enormous portion of my life that I can hardly remember I did something that other people my age would consider normal, like go for drinks with colleagues. The way Shelton recognized that in me feels a little shameful but somehow, a kind of relief sits with me regardless. I nod, resigned and above all exhausted and I think he sees that in me because he gets up and extends a hand to help me up. I never saw him as the kind of person to selflessly care for someone else, made him into a ruthless competitor whose only role in my life was to be an opposing force. As I take his hand and he helps me up, I feel some pain in my shoulder but I become clearer, more aware of the machinations of my mind: I made him that. The words he said to me a few weeks ago, the gist of “you did the rest on your own” really hits me in that moment because it’s true. Instead of knowing him, trying to understand him, I painted him into a malevolent creature completely independent from his actual person.  
  
Shelton walks me out to my car and when he offers me a drag of his cigarette, it’s the first time in years that I accept it. He starts talking about himself, about how he doesn’t actually smoke anymore but used to and how every once in a while, he still needs that taste of it, just a taste to keep him grounded and on track with his efforts. I’m beginning to understand that that’s what truly made the difference between us. He allows himself. The chatter continues, delves into topics that aren’t really interesting to me but I listen regardless. I’m grateful for hearing something other than my own ruminations. He asks me if I’m sure I’m okay to drive and it’s such a simple, innocuous but honest gesture that once I assure him I am, once he turns around and heads back to the gym, I cry for the first time in a long time.

\---

  
I can really tell the difference in my state of mind, when I’m finally fully rested. On Monday, I take the day off classes and I sleep until eleven in the morning, a number I haven’t seen on the alarm clock in much too long. This completely dreamless and vacant kind of sleep that pulled me under felt so restorative that I can’t help but be in a good mood. With all of this, I can’t help but feel strangely about how I’ve been treating myself for so long, like a spell is finally lifted off of me and I can see clearly. I rise groggily, like any twenty-something would, steps into the kitchen, then breakfast in bed. Even the food itself is so nourishing, a hunger imminently stilled without weighing out the ingredients first. There’s still that voice in the back of my head that nags at me for being sloppy but with the energy I have from rest and a good meal, it’s easier to ward it off.   
  
That day, I go out for a walk with no purpose.   
Down the street toward the city center, with the cars beetled up on each side of it and the sweet, moist smell of rotting fall leaves. The sky seems to have read me because it’s so blue it looks artificial behind the roofs of the houses. When I stop by a convenience store to get a drink, I accidentally see my reflection without mentally evaluating it first, no expectations or labels and I see then that I look healthy and strong, the fall behind me in perfect, visual harmony with my red hair. For a moment, I’m so happy, so satisfied that I think I could cry with it - the candy I buy only strengthens the sentiment.   
  
The days trickle past until Friday and despite my lack of training, I start feeling stronger. I go back to university, finally able to truly focus on the classes and the walks I take to and from my department give me the joyous sense that life is filled with little gifts, each and every one of them neatly packaged and presented if I just look close enough. I sleep so well and eat even better and with the clarity in my head I can finally truly see the golden halo around the trees, the red brick buildings glinting back at me in the setting sun. I love every single day of this break.   
  
On Friday, Sid’s surprised at how I’m getting ready to head out for the night. It’s almost like he’s a little offended because I shot him down so many times when he asked me if I wanted to join him but the larger part of him seems to be happy for me, relieved even. His smile has a kind of smug quality to it, like he’s privy to some detail I’m not yet aware of and when I head out, he wishes me good luck. I’m not sure what he means by it but far too excited to care.   
  
I meet the rest of the crew in a small pub right outside the university building and many of them are already a little red-faced, seemingly very invested in the little game they thought up and very much enjoying it. It surprises me how well I fit into the group despite not having been to practice in a full week but I realize that many of them have taken breaks before, due to injury or otherwise. I’m greeted so enthusiastically that I felt silly for having doubts to begin with, so enthusiastically that I’m taken aback - I always thought I wasn’t noticed at all save for the people I talk to on a regular basis.   
  
And of course, I see Shelton.   
Without the light of envy and resentment that I shone on him he looks riveting. I knew he was attractive before but today, something about the way he’s seated smack-dab in the middle of the table like he’s Jesus with his followers has me incapable of taking my eyes off him. I see him before he sees me and when I watch him for just those few seconds until he looks up, he’s talking and motioning and smiling and laughing. He’s so alive, he’s so full of life I think that if I even had half of that bridling energy I could run to the moon and back right that moment.   
  
When our eyes meet, time stands still. I do a little, awkward wave with my hand and grin and I don’t expect how thrilled he looks to have me here which has me turning beet-red. His eyes glint through the dim room and his smile, for just a split-second, takes on this private quality, lowered lids, a dimple tugging at the corner of his mouth - but it’s gone so quickly I must have imagined it. I sit across from him and for the first bit we don’t talk much but I feel his presence like a vortex, something that ever-so-slightly pulls me toward him.   
  
After a few hours we change locations - some of my teammates head home and I’d be one of them if Shelton didn’t do a number on trying to convince me to come to the club with them. It’s him, two girls from the women’s team I don’t see much and Louis, a colleague that started around the same time as I did but that I never really talked to that much on account of him competing primarily in backstroke and therefore not really being on my radar. Shelton and I get a moment to ourselves when we take the subway to the location - I’m still in disbelief over how I’m going clubbing of all things - and the car is so crowded the two of us are parted from the other three by a mass of people. He holds onto the yellow pole, bicep strained through his black tee and the barbed wire tattoo twitching with his grip. I can’t help but look at the imprint of that piece of metal through his nipple a little too long.   
“I’m glad you came out.” He tells me and for a second I’m confused because I was thinking about a different kind of coming out, provoked by that little dent in his shirt but then I catch on and shake my head.   
“Yeah- yeah, me too.”   
His grin is devilish and it tells me I wasn’t being as subtle as I’d hoped.   
“Good week?” he asks and the way he smiles with just a half of his mouth and raises his eyebrows has me feeling hot under my skin.   
“Good week.”   
  
He seems satisfied at that and I catch myself wishing we could stay in this private, not-so-private bubble among masses of people a little longer. With the time I spent being envious of him, turning him into all kinds of evil, I never truly noticed him for him. And now that I’m seeing it for the first time, the whole year of it hits me at once.   
  
The line to the club is nightmarishly long but anything can be fun with the right company. Shelton takes on the role of the entertainer, posing the most outrageous would-you-rather scenarios his wicked mind can come up with. I find I get along quite well with Abby from the women’s team and wonder why I’d never bothered getting to know them better. Louis brought a flask and we take turns drinking from it and by the time we’re let in, I feel the strong buzz of vodka going through my system.   
  
Through the graffitied doors and into a cacophony of different-coloured lights and thrumming bass - I can hardly think. It’s the kind of thing you’d see in movies, like falling through the rabbit hole to Wonderland. My mind turns from night-dark to pink-blue in an instant and I don’t even mind that I can’t seem to hear my own thoughts. Everything is a blur of flesh and skin and sweat, cut-off movements from the strobe lights. Shelton takes me by the hand and motions for me to take Abby’s so we don’t lose one another but while I comply, I don’t care about much else than Shelton not letting go of my wrist.   
  
Soon, I find myself in a secluded corner somewhere behind the bathrooms and while the music isn’t loud enough here to assault my eardrums like it does on the dance floor, Shelton still has to raise his voice when he asks me:   
“Have you ever done Molly?” 

Something flatlines in my head.  
I look behind me to see how everyone else is reacting but Abby is invested in a conversation with a stranger and the other girl is nowhere to be seen. Surprisingly it’s not even Shelton drawing the baggy from his pocket but Louis, so my shock isn’t mirrored anywhere - I feel like a deer caught in the headlights.   
  
Shelton notices this.   
“It’s okay, you don’t have to!” But right as he says this he holds out his palm then knocks the little pink pill back, following it with a gulp of water. Louis turns to me, offering me his open hand.   
  
I hesitate.   
I’ve been following Shelton’s advice recently to let myself go a little bit so I reckon that if he does it and he’s still fine, then I should be too. On the other hand the kind of dam break scares me. If I’m cool doing this then what’ll that lead up to? I’ve drank before and I’ve smoked weed before but doing something as hard as MDMA is a risk I’m not sure I’m willing to take- suddenly Shelton is all up in my space and murmurs in that low cant of his.   
“It’s _really_ fun.”   
The rough tenor of his voice settles it for me - a curl of dark, heavy arousal licks at me from the inside. I stretch out my hand and feel the pill be dropped into it, throw it back, then accept the bottle of water from Louis to “prevent heartburn” - the fact that these two were worried about heartburn when they just did hard drugs is beyond me. Then again, so did I and I’d rather not get heartburn.   
  
In the hour it takes to kick in, I anxiously pace from the bathroom and back, I go outside for fresh air, come back to the dance floor. I’m sure I could still throw up if I needed to but the time keeps passing and I keep not making that choice. I’m still in that space between panic and excitement, my body not quite sure which one to settle on, a giddy kind of swoop in my belly, racing heart and the flashing lights casting over it. I feel some kind of way, then Shelton grabs me by the wrist again and drags me onto the dance floor, all the way from the musky, desolate corner I was making my home, with its sticky chipped wood tables, rings of condensation and sugary drink-spill over its surface to the belly of the beast, center of the light-machine. I almost resist but it’s hard to, sly smile over the pink half of his face, lashes casting a shadow that reaches the bridge of his nose with how low they’re dipped. When he flashes his teeth they look like plastic.   
  
My steps on the concrete ground thud in unison with my heartbeat and the wall of people that seemed so impermeable before becomes a fluid shape, parting in two with Shelton and I melting into it, like glucose through a cell membrane. The fluttering in my stomach becomes electric at the center of the dance floor and then suddenly, all I feel is just overwhelming _good_.

A deep, pounding bass hits me right at the center of my sternum, vibrating through me so hard my lungs become the body of a guitar, a shell that plays back ocean sounds when held up to an ear. I feel like I’m completely hollowed out and I feel so light that one wrong step threatens to kick me into the air. Shelton still has his hand on my wrist and the energy I feel arriving in my body from his is a tangible thing - it’s like all his secrets and emotions and all the thoughts he’s ever had, all the memories, are infiltrating me through that one shared point of contact. Vice versa, I feel all that heaviness to me, all the places I’m too serious, halved in load, some of it on his shoulders and some of it on mine. He starts dancing and to my surprise I find myself moving with him, not one thought to the movement, just tissue picking up the sound of the music and moving on its own accord, removed from that cerebral powerhouse that usually guides me.  
  
The strobe lights hit me like a sunrise, a brightness followed by that physical pink-blue and I see everything to Shelton at once: the pearls of sweat on his forehead, melding into his charcoal hairline, the damp curls there falling into his face. He’s glowing like a work of art, the neon-pink shine on his top lip, his eyelids, the arch of his cheekbones. His eyes are closed, mouth slightly agape, the full slope of it, lashes so long and so close I could count them. He’s water, as he moves. I believe that in that moment, he becomes the _it_ that’s been haunting me but in a metaphysical way. He’s the volatile nature and the caress all at once, bliss and focused mindfulness. When he opens his eyes to look up at me, I’m thrown off by the deep dark intrigue behind them. Showing no cheek, no undercurrent of mocking, just the open plane of his handsome face, a few inches away from my own.   
He’s not shorter by much but with how we’re stood, the soft curves of his shoulders appear something frail, despite hours upon hours of training, and evoke something greedy and animalistic in me.   
  
One of his hands creeps up onto my waist and he’s wordless, maintains that eye-contact as if to check I’m okay with it. The heat of his palm over my shirt feels so good I slip my eyes closed and touch him back, my fingers skating the ribs on his left side, the one I know has a knife tattooed under that taunting, tight black tee. He’s pulled close, close enough for me to feel the sharp waist of his pants against my belly, thigh against thigh.   
He’s sticky-sweet, salty, sweaty - beyond anything I could have ever dreamed up. He’s real.

  
  
\--- 

  
We dance for what feels like hours.   
I’m so full of life, I feel the heat of his body, the bodies around me, fuel me until my nerves are fried-out and I’m so happy I could die with it. The small of Shelton’s back, a damp concave under my palms and the curve of his waist are imprinted into my mind, the negative of that image to carry around with me. When we finally step outside - and we’re alone by now, the others long disappeared into their own shenanigans, the air that hits me feels heavenly, thick and cold like water.   
I don’t feel quite as full of it as I did a few hours ago but the dancing and the live form of that white-hot creature under my hands leaves me satisfied and blissful.   
We sit on the steps to the club, my jacket that little bit too thin to really shield me from the cold so he huddles next to me and leans his head back against my shoulder, far enough that the column of his throat becomes a long, enticing thing.   
“That was good. That was so fun.” he mumbles and he’s so close I can feel his mouth moving. He’s still giddy and I’m thrilled at being allowed in far enough to see him like this.   
“How are you feeling?” he then asks me and I’m almost sick with how he moves his head off my shoulder to look me in the eye. Gorgeous, aqua eyes. I can’t tell him the truth, which is that I want really badly to kiss him right now.   
“Good.”   
“Yeah?”   
“Yeah.”   
  
“Hey, Gene-” Shelton starts and adjusts himself, sitting up straight with his hands braced on the concrete step under us. I watch him watch me. The lust presses at me from the inside out, a creature trying to break through my sternum but I have nowhere to put it, nothing to do with it other than have it wreak havoc within me. In that moment Shelton is the most enticing thing I’ve ever seen and I’m not sure what to do with myself. Shelton musters me, then shakes his head.

“Forget about it.”

——

Recollecting the memories in the cold light of morning, none of it seems quite as profound and meaningful as the night before. I wake up at three in the afternoon, eat my way through a pack of stale crackers before I get up to try and find some actual food. All of the vivid, colorful memories, the heightened sensations, the smells, tastes, the feeling of Shelton under my hands have faded and what’s left of it is just a strange, foreign feeling like the person I was acting as in those memories, was a different presence, connected to me by only a thin thread of shared consciousness. I haven’t felt this physically ill in forever and my thoughts are slowed down to a crawling pace, the vague sensation that I’m removed from my emotions by a thick glass wall.

The whole day is spent in a fog, just one grey mass of sameness that I spend wallowing in my room, clutching a water bottle while I watch TV in bed - it’s the other side of that coin, an insidious hangover fif to repel me from any substance forever. I think of texting Shelton but I find that I’m too far removed from any kind of rational, sober state that I don’t think any of what I could say to him would hold up. I wonder if he feels as shit as me today. I reckon he probably doesn’t because he’s built to persist.

Sunday is looking up, the achey, puffy, inflamed weight on my face lifting and only leaving behind the sense of exhaustion I’d been feeling a day prior. I go to the gym for the first time in a week and know that on Monday, I’d have to go back to the pool no matter what, but what’s truly concerning me is how detached I still feel despite having tried my best to eat, sleep and run it all off.

—-

The water is unyielding.

I’m lost in the rhythm; My left arm pulled back just past my waist before I whip it forward and drive my hand through the surface of the water, right arm pulling back simultaneously. Inhale like I’m gasping for air then throw my head back underwater, hearing the rustle of my breath escape my mouth in fat bubbles. I can tell that I’m more rested and I’ve been doing well at the gym but for some reason, the water feels more liquid today, like I can’t get that needed resistance to propel me forward. I’m just on my warm-ups, trying to get back in the groove but even after a week off, the frustration comes back like a familiar face.

I can sense that the coach is in a bad mood today because of how he reprimands me for my form - even Shelton gets a slice of it despite him not having the same kind of setbacks that I do, after the same night out I had.

I haven’t talked to him since Friday and the longer I wait, the weirder it becomes that we haven’t talked. I’m taking a break by the poolside when I spot him two lanes over, stretching his shoulders by pulling them toward his head with the hook of his elbow. I wonder how to best break the silence later, if maybe I should ask him if he needs another ride home, but when he looks over to spot me watching him, he quickly averts his eyes without any semblance of acknowledgement.

While it stings in that moment, I try my best not to make a mountain out of a molehill and focus on getting my head back in the game, however, the same thing keeps happening throughout the entire practice. It feels distinctly like he’s avoiding me.

When I try to find him after practice, he’s left long before I even get out of the shower.

—-

As the days pass and the date where the competitors for our team will be revealed keeps nearing, I find myself easily slipping back into that same work-mentality I’d discarded the week prior. When the times are on the line, things start twisting again, my perspective shifting again. I feel that same, unpleasant presence in my chest that I did before.

Shelton avoiding me doesn’t make it any easier. I begin ruminating on what I might have said or done to put him off, picking apart the last scene we shared just before we both headed home on that early, pre-sunrise Saturday morning. The whole scene comes unraveled the more I think about it; Curly head on my shoulder, the long column of his throat. I get the vague sensation he must have sensed my lust despite making no indications and that this strange telepathic knowledge could have disgusted him. I remember that night with an undercurrent of shame and colored in that, almost anything can feel like a massive breach.

When the lists with our starting positions get revealed, however, and I see that I’ve been benched, it all starts making sense to me.

**Author's Note:**

> taxidermy fox.jpeg


End file.
